4 Nights on a Train... (Back to our summer trip)

Although our summer trip involved crossing 2 seas, traveling through 7 countries, and traversing 2 continents, when people ask us what we did over the summer, our short answer is usually: "Trans-Siberian." I'm not really sure why we answer that way, but it might be because the 4 nights we spent on the Trans-Siberian train (from Moscow to Irkutsk) was the longest number of nights we spent in any one bed (I can't say "in one place" because our beds were constantly in motion for those 4 days). Whatever the reason, the Trans-Siberian portion of our trip was certainly one of the more memorable elements of the summer's travels. Here's my best attempt at summarizing 5000 kilometers of Europe and Asia in one blog post:
We left Moscow at 11:45PM on a Saturday night. Here we are about to board the train (those are the "provodnitsas" (cabin attendants) that traveled in our car the whole way across Siberia. They ran a very tight ship!
We traveled on Train #2, which is Russia's flagship train. The more famous trains in Russia all have names. Ours was called "Rossiya." (you can see it written on the side of the car above).
We paid a little extra and traveled First Class on the Rossiya train. We were very glad that we did. It allowed us to have a private cabin. (here's Emily playing games on the iPod - we were very glad we'd brought that handy little device)

Tyler and Julie - this one's for you. We REALLY enjoyed learning to play "Jaipur," the two-person card game that Tyler & Julie bought us for our birthdays. It was a wonderfully portable game, and we passed many happy hours playing it while we drank coffee and relaxed on our bunks.

Here's a look at our sleeping compartment aboard the train:



The Trans-Siberian train that we were on actually spanned almost the entire length of Russia, from Moscow to Vladivostok. However, it stopped many times along the way (most of the stops were around 5-15 minutes). The train stopped on average about 4 times a day. When it did stop, we took advantage of the opportunity and jumped out to stretch our legs, take pictures, and occasionally do a little shopping.
Here's our Provodnitsa standing by the entrance to our car. She did her hair and put on her hat at every stop so that she could look just-so while she stood guard over the entrance to our car:
At some of the smaller, more remote towns, the local people would turn out to sell things to passengers from the passing trains.
When we stopped, we usually didn't buy anything (occasionally a cold beverage, as the restaurant car charged a fortune for their barely-chilled drinks). Instead, we just strolled up and down the platform and enjoyed the fresh air (the windows of our cabin were locked the whole trip because the cars are climate-controlled). Here's a video of one of the towns we visited in Siberia:


On our third full day aboard the train, somewhere in Eastern Siberia, we decided to press our luck a bit and try some local cuisine. I (Brad) have grown up eating "Varenikie," which is a Russian Mennonite dish. I have always believed that my Mom's varenikie must be the best in the world. However, never having tried anyone else's, I had no real authority to make that claim. In Russia, though, varenikie is a very common food. We decided to buy some varenikie from one of the old ladies who were selling food on the station platform at one of the towns in Eastern Siberia. Here's our verdict:


And of course, once we were done eating, we had to do dishes. Here's how one does dishes while traveling on a train for 4 days:


The question we get asked over and over isn't "what was Mongolia like?" or "how was the food in Russia?" We tend to hear 2 questions repeated over and over: 1) Did you go to Ikea while you were in Sweden? (the answer's no. we have one of those in Hong Kong). and the second (and most asked question): 2) What did you do with all that time on the train?

Quite honestly, it's hard to account for the time. We snacked a lot. We took long naps. We played "Jaipur." And we didn't read nearly as many books as we'd planned to. For my part, I (Brad) spent an enormous amount of time just looking out the window (usually I combined this with snacking or coffee drinking). We had unlimited boiling water from the "Samovar" (kettle) down at the end of our car, so we made a lot of hot drinks. Tea & coffee became a pleasant ritual during our journey. Here's some of what we saw along the way:



When we got back to Hong Kong, one of our colleagues (who had already gone on the Trans-Sib a few years ago) asked us, "Did you get a picture of the birch trees?!" The joke, of course, is that about 75% of the countryside we traveled through was nothing but birch trees. The answer is yes. Yes, Jeff. We did take a picture of the birch trees. Here it is. Just for you.









If you're interested in what the inside of a train looks like, have a look at this video (I basically narrated a video as I walked through 3 of the cars on our train):


No questions for you this week, but we love it when you comment!

Next post: Irkutsk, Lake Baikal, and Olkhon Island (including a video of our Siberian Sauna experience!)